Display racks are commonly used in supermarkets, grocery stores and the like to display various items including individual bags of chips or other snacks. Such products have a limited shelf life due to the nature of the product packaged. In order to maintain fresh product on the shelves of the display rack, it is desirable to move the older product forwardly to the front of the shelves where it will be removed by the consumer. Newer, fresher product is preferably placed toward the rear of the shelf so that the older product located at the front of the shelf is removed before the newer product, thus avoiding any loss of product due to the product becoming stale. Such display racks commonly have fixed shelves secured to vertical uprights of the display rack. When stocking product on such shelves, in order to place product toward the rear of the shelf, the loader must reach back behind the existing product located at the front of the shelf in order to stock the rear portion of the shelf with new product. Such loading practices are time consuming and onerous on the individual loading the shelves of the display rack.
Another inherent difficulty with display racks having fixed shelves is that the upper shelves tend to obstruct the customer's line of sight to goods located toward the rear of the lower shelves.
As a result of these difficulties, several pull-out or extendible shelves have been developed for use in display racks. Such pull-out shelves extend outwardly like a dresser drawer to permit stocking of product, product rotation and easy access to the shelf by the customer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,720,230 discloses a pull-out shelf which extends forwardly from a pair of shelf brackets secured to the vertical uprights of a display rack. The shelf disclosed in this patent is a solid shelf utilizing a pair of three-part telescopic sliders on each side of the shelf in order to enable the shelf to pull outwardly to an extended position and to be pushed inwardly to a retracted position.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,602,570 and 4,646,658 both disclose pull-out shelves for use in a display rack. The shelf disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,658 has a two-part side support on each side of the shelf, each section or part having a slot therethrough in which a screw rides. The shelf itself is divided into different sections which are hingedly connected and are adapted to fold together when the shelf is retracted and unfold when the shelf is pulled out. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,570 discloses a pull-out shelf having side supports which are telescopically mounted within one another so as to enable the shelf to be extended. Each of these shelves and shelf supports utilizes a plurality of movable components which increases the cost of manufacturing such a shelf assembly and increases the risk of the shelf becoming jammed.
Additionally, each of the pull-out shelves disclosed in these prior art patents is horizontally oriented. With horizontally oriented shelves, product located at the rear of the shelf does not move forwardly so, consequently, the customer must reach between the shelves in order to remove product if product is not located at the front of the shelf. In order to provide product which moves forwardly toward the front of the shelf, it is common to decline the shelf so as to enable gravity to move the product forwardly to the front of the shelf where it is more easily accessible to the consumer. Applicant's own U.S. Pat. No. 4,128,177 discloses a display rack utilizing such gravity feed shelves. However, such gravity feed shelves are usually not extendible.
Therefore, it has been one objective of the present invention to provide a display rack having gravity feed shelves which are extendible so as to enable a merchandiser to easily stock and rotate product.
It has been a further objective of the present invention to provide a display rack having pull-out gravity feed shelves which enable the shelves to be placed closer together increasing the "pack out" or amount of product which may be displayed on the rack.
It has been a further objective of the present invention to provide a display rack having pull-out gravity feed shelves which is simpler and less expensive to manufacture than previously known display racks having pull-out shelves.